5.5. do( ) Versus prepare( )

As we mentioned in a previous section, the do( ) method supplied by the DBI makes executing non-SELECT statements much simpler than repeatedly preparing and executing statements. This is achieved by simply wrapping the prepare and execute stages into one composite method.

There is a drawback to doing this, however: performance. If you invoked do( ) repeatedly to insert a huge number of rows into a table, you could be preparing a statement handle many times more than is required, especially if the statement contained placeholder variables. For example, the following script inserts some rows into the megaliths table: